The Nomad

by Simon Hawke

  * * *

  “It is time for him to leave us, Mira,” said her mother.

  They stood at the entrance to their tent as the dark sun sank on the horizon, watching Ogar, who stood alone by the fire, gazing into the flames.

  “No!” said Mira, turning to gaze at her mother with alarm. “How can you say that?”

  “Because it is true, my daughter.”

  “But he is one of us now!”

  “No,” said Garda, “he is not truly one of us and never can be.”

  “But he is my husband, and the father of our child!”

  “The child is old enough to thrive now,” Garda said. “And it is time for Ogar to rejoin his people.”

  “Would you drive him out, just because he is a halfling?”

  “No,” said Garda. “That is not our way, Mira, and you know it. Kether has shown us the wisdom of giving up old hatreds. But it has been five years now, and Ogar pines for his tribe and for his homeland. Halflings are strongly connected to their tribe and their land. If he remains with us much longer, he will die.”

  “Then I must go back with him,” Mira said. “You cannot,” her mother replied. “They would not accept you, and they would never accept your son. He would be anathema to them, and they would not allow him to survive. If you were to return with Ogar, it would mean death for all of you.”

  “What must I do, then?” Mira asked, exasperated. “You must accept what is,” her mother said. “As I had to accept it when your father left us. You have little Alaron. Cherish him, the way that I have cherished you, and be thankful for the love that has produced him.”

  Mira and Ogar talked long into the night. In the five years they had spent together, they had learned one another’s language, and they had grown so close that each had become part of the other. Mira had promised herself she would not cry, she did not want to make the parting any more difficult for Ogar than it already was. They had made love for the last time and he gave her a bracelet off his arm, a band of bronze engraved with the name and symbol of his clan. In turn, Mira had given him a simple necklace of green and red ceramic beads that she had made and worn. In the morning, when she awoke, Ogar was gone. And then she cried.

  * * *

  It took a long time for Ogar to reach his people, and while his heart grew lighter with each step that brought him closer to his homeland and his tribe, his grief at leaving Mira and his son, Alaron, increased as well. He had been taught that elves were the sworn enemies of halflings, and yet, even when he had first seen her, he had not been able to look upon Mira as his enemy. Nor had her tribe treated him as a hated adversary. They had taken him in and nursed him back to health, and no one had been more attentive to his needs than Mira, who had remained by his side until he had regained his strength. By then, he knew he loved her, and he also knew that she loved him.

  When Mira asked consent from Kether to take him for her husband, Kether had asked only if she truly loved him, and knew that he loved her. No one had raised the question of his race, and no one had treated little Alaron any differently from the other children of the tribe when he was born. How could such people be his enemies?

  Ogar had resolved that he would tell his father all about what happened as soon as he returned. His father would be pleased and proud, he knew. His son was not dead, as the tribe must surely believe by now. And Ogar was not only alive, but returning triumphant, having slain not one but three humans—Mira had slain the fourth. He had fulfilled his Ritual of Promise.

  But, more importantly, he would bear news that not all elves were the halflings’ enemies. He would ask permission from his father to return and bring back his wife and son, so that the tribe could find out for themselves that elves and halflings could live together… even love one another.

  His tribe had welcomed him on his return, and there was a great celebration, and his father had sat proudly in his chieftain’s place as he told how he had slain his mountain cat in single combat, and then how he had slain the humans. But when he told them about Mira, everything had changed.

  “Why did you not kill the elf, as well?” his father asked, his face darkening. “Father, she saved my life,” protested Ogar. “Saved her own life, you mean,” replied his father, scowling. “The humans had attacked her, and she merely used you for a diversion so that she could strike. That is the way of elves. They are duplicitous.”

  “Father, that is not true,” said Ogar emphatically. “The fourth human would have killed me had she not come to my aid. He had wounded me severely, and she could easily have left me there to die. Instead, she pulled me out of the water and laid me on the shore, then tended to my wounds. And then she brought me back with her to her own tribe, and they took me in until I had recovered. They could easily have killed me, Father, but they accepted me into their tribe.”

  “You joined an elven tribe?” his father said, aghast. “They are called the Moon Runners, Father,” Ogar said, “and they are not at all the way we have been taught elves are. They treated me with kindness, and it made no difference to any of them that I was halfling. I lived as one of them.”

  “As their slave, you mean!” his father said angrily.

  “No! Would they allow a slave to marry one of their own?”

  “What?” his father said, jumping to his feet.

  “Mira is my wife, Father,” Ogar said. “We have a child. You have a grandson. If you could but meet them, I know that you would—”

  “That a son of mine should mate with a filthy elf and beget offspring with her!” his father shouted furiously as the other members of the tribe joined his outraged cry. “Never did I think to live to see this day!”

  “Father, listen to me—” Ogar said, but he could not shout over the tumult that his words had prompted.

  “You have disgraced me!” his father roared, pointing at him. “You have disgraced the tribe! You have disgraced all halflings everywhere!”

  “Father, you are wrong—”

  “Silence! You have no place to speak! I would sooner see you mating with an animal than to know you had rutted with an elf! You are no son of mine! You are no proper halfling! You are polluted and disgraced, and we must cleanse ourselves of this disgusting stain upon our tribe! Hear me, people! Ogar is no longer my son! I, Ragna, chieftain of the Kalimor, hereby curse him as anathema, and decree the punishment of death by fire to burn out this disease that has sprung up among us! Remove him from my sight!”

  The seized him and dragged him away, kicking and fighting, and bound him securely to a nearby agafari tree while they went to prepare the stake and build the fire. In the morning, they would conduct the Ritual of Purging, where each member of the tribe would formally renounce him and curse his name before their chief, and when the sun set, they would bum him.

  Late that night, after they had all retired, Ogar’s mother came to see him. She stood before him with tears in her eyes and asked him why he had done such an awful thing, why he had brought such pain into her heart. He thought of trying to explain it to her, but then realized she would never understand, and so said nothing.

  “Will you not even speak to me, my son?” she said, “one final time, before I must renounce you to your father?”

  He looked up at her then and sought understanding in her eyes. He saw none. But perhaps there was one final hope. “Release me, Mother,” he said. “If I have so disgraced the tribe, at least let me go back to those who would accept me. Let me rejoin my wife and son.”

  “I cannot,” she said. “Much as it breaks my heart, your father’s word is law. You know that.”

  “So then you would let me die?”

  “I must,” she said. “I have your brothers and your sisters to consider. For their sake, I cannot risk their father’s wrath. Besides, you would have nothing to return to.”

  He looked up at her with sudden concern. “What do you mean?”

  “Your father has sent a runner to the Faceless One.”

  “No!” said Ogar with horror.
“No, not him!”

  “There is nothing I can do,” she said. “Your father’s will is law. Never have I seen him so furious before. He has sworn that he will undo the disgrace that you have brought upon us, and he will ask the Faceless One to cast a spell against the Moon Runners, killing every last elfin the tribe.”

  “But they have done nothing!”

  “They have defiled Ragna’s son,” she said, “and through you, they have defiled Ragna. He is set upon his course, and nothing will dissuade him.”

  “Release me, Mother! For pity’s sake, release me!”

  “Would you condemn me to the fate you would escape?” she said. “Would you condemn your brothers and your sisters to the flames in your place? How can you ask me such a thing? Truly, you have been defiled by the elves, that you could think of yourself at such a time, at their expense.”

  “I do not think only of myself, but of my wife and son, and of an entire tribe of people who have done nothing to offend you!”

  “So, I see now where your true allegiance lies,” she said. “Ragna was right. You are no longer Ogar. You are no longer my son. You care more about a tribe of misbegotten elves than you do about your own family and your people. You are no longer halfling. My son is dead. I thought that he had died five years ago, and I see now I was right. I have already done my grieving. Nothing more remains.”

  She turned and left him then, though he cried out and strained against his bonds. But they had tied him firmly, and there was no escape.

  * * *

  They had come down from the lower foothills of the northern slopes to cross a small valley at the desert’s edge, beyond which, in a jagged, curving line stretching out as far as the eye could see, lay the highest peaks among the Ringing Mountains. In the distance, as they had started across the valley, they had been able to see the Dragon’s Tooth, the tallest peak in all of Athas. Kether had seen it in his vision, and he believed that they would find the pyreen there. When he had told them that their quest was almost at its end, there was great joy among the Moon Runners, and as they began to cross the valley, heading toward the mountains, they had spontaneously burst into song.

  Less than an hour later, all of them were dead. Alaron stood alone among their fallen bodies, stunned and numb and horrified beyond all capacity to endure, unable to understand what had happened to them. His mother lay stretched out at his feet, her eyes wide open and unseeing, her lips pulled back into a rictus of agony that had frozen on her features. He had prodded her and tearfully called her name and screamed, but she had not responded. She would never respond to him or anyone again.

  Kivara, too, lay dead, and close beside her, Eyron and Lyric, his three young playmates, who had all fallen writhing and screaming to the ground, clutching at their throats and twisting in agony until they breathed their last. Kether, too, had fallen, and the mighty chieftain was no more. One by one, they had all been struck down by some terrible, unseen force, and now only Alaron remained, somehow unaffected by whatever had struck down the rest of them. Terrified and helpless, he had watched all his people die in excruciating agony.

  Now he gazed emptily at the twisted bodies strewn all around him on the sand, and it was a sight too horrible for his young mind to accept. He stood there, breathing in short gasps, feeling a terrible pressure in his little chest, tears flowing freely down his cheeks as he whimpered pathetically. And then something within him snapped.

  He turned and started walking out into the desert, not knowing where he was going, not caring, unable even to think. He simply placed one foot before the other, walking with his eyes glazed and unfocused, and after a few steps, his little legs began to move more quickly, and then he began to run.

  Half whimpering, half gasping for breath, he ran faster and faster and faster, as if he could somehow outdistance the horror that lay behind him. Farther and farther out into the desert he ran, gulping deep lungfuls of air as an intolerable weight seemed to press down on his chest and something deep within him twisted and churned and writhed. He ran faster than he had ever run before, he ran until his strength gave out completely, but something in his mind broke down long before his muscles ceased responding. He fell, sprawling, face down on the desert sand, his fingers scrabbling for purchase, as if he had to grasp the sunbaked soil to keep from falling off the world.

  His father had simply left one day, and now his mother, his guardian and his protector, was also gone forever. Pretty Kivara, his mischievous young playmate… gone. Happy, little Lyric, who always laughed and sang… gone. Eyron, who was just a few years older and always seemed to know everything better than anybody else… gone. Kether, their noble, visionary chieftain… gone. Everyone and everything he knew was gone, leaving him alone. Abandoned. Helpless. Why had he survived? Why? Why?

  “WHYYYYYYYYYY?” his mind screamed, and as it screamed, it shattered, fragmenting into bits and pieces as his identity disintegrated and the young elfling known as Alaron, named after a bygone king, simply ceased to be. And as he lay there, senseless, dead and yet not dead, the fragmented pieces of his mind sought desperately to preserve themselves, and started to reform anew. And as if the cry was heard in a world beyond the plane of his existence, there came an answer. First one, then two, then three, then four…

  * * *

  “I know,” he said softly, opening his eyes. He swallowed hard and blinked back tears. “I… know.”

  “Yes,” said the Sage, gazing at him with a kindly expression. “Yes, you do. Was it what you wanted?”

  “All those years, wondering, yearning for the truth… and now I wish I had never found it,” he said miserably.

  “It was a hard truth that you discovered, Alaron,” said the Sage.

  “You know my truename?” Sorak said. “But… you said that you would not be with me on the journey…”

  “Nor was I,” said the Sage, shaking his head, sadly. “It was enough for me to know what you would discover. I had no wish to see it for myself.”

  “You knew?”

  “Yes, I knew,” the Sage replied. “Even though my path in life took me away from them, some bonds can never break. I felt it when she died.”

  “She?” said Sorak.

  “Your mother, Mira,” said the Sage. “She was daughter.”

  “Father?” said the Guardian, emerging. “Is it true? Is it really you?”

  “Yes, Mira,” said the Sage, shaking his head. “You were but an infant when I left. And I have changed much since that time. I did not think you would remember.”

  Tears were flowing freely down Sorak’s cheeks now, but it was the Guardian who wept. They all wept. All of them together, the tribe, the Moon Runners, who had died, and yet lived on.

  “I do not understand,” the Guardian said. “How can this be? We are a part of Sorak.”

  “A part of you is part of Sorak,” said the Sage. “And a part of you is Mira, the spirit of my long lost daughter. And a part of you is Garda, my wife, Mira’s mother, and Alaron’s grandmother.

  “The powerful psionic gifts that Alaron was born with, but had not yet evidenced, had forged a strong but subtle bond with you, and with others of the tribe, and he could not accept your deaths, so he would not let you die. He did not know what he was doing. He saw you dying, and he could not endure it, so some inner part of him held onto you with a strength that defied even that of death itself. His tormented little mind could not suffer the hardship, and so it broke apart, but in doing so, he sacrificed his own identity so that you could live. You, and Kether, and Kivara, and Eyron and Lyric and the others…”

  “But… what of the Inner Child? And the Shade?”

  “The Inner Child is the one who fled in terror from the horror it had seen, and cocooned itself deep in the farthest recesses of your common mind. The Shade is the primal force of your survival, the fury that you felt at death, the last defiant rebel against inevitable fate.”

  “And Screech?” asked Sorak, returning to the fore. “What gave birth to Screech?�
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  “You did,” said the Sage. “He is the part of you that knew the path that you would walk even at the moment of your birth, the embodiment of your calling to choose the Path of Preserver, and your fate to embrace the Druid Wu. He was born at the moment Alaron had ceased to be, when in his last extremity he drew strength out of the werid itself, and manifested in your mind. Screech is that part of you that is Athas itself, and every Irving creature the planet has produced. You are the Crown of Eves, Sorak, born of a chieftain’s seventh son. The prophecy did not say that it would be an elven chieftain. Your father fell, when he came to the rescue of your mother, and then he rose again, when she tended to his wounds and saved him, and out of that a new life was created—your life.”

  “And the great, good ruler?” Sorak asked “Not a ruler, but one who hopes to guide,” the Sage replied. “The avangion, a being still in the process of its slow birth, through me. And now that you have come, and learned the truth about yourself and me, another cycle in the process has become complete. Or, perhaps I should say, may soon become complete, depending on what you decide.”

  “What I decide?” said Sorak. “But… why should that decision rest with me?”

  “Because it must be your choice,” the Sage replied. “Your willing choice. You are the Crown of Elves, and it is you who must empower the next stage of my metamorphosis, without which I cannot proceed. But it is a decision you must choose to make, of your own free will.”

  “Why… of course, Grandfather,” said Sorak. Tell me what I have to do.”

  “Do not agree so quickly,” said the Sage. “The sacrifice mat you must make is great”